In a handwritten letter from Belmarsh prison, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange says he is being denied a chance to defend himself and that elements in the US that "hate truth, liberty and justice" want him extradited and dead.

The letter was sent to independent British journalist Gordon Dimmack. It was dated May 13 - ten days before the US announced 17 additional charges under the Espionage Act against the jailed whistleblower.

In light of the new indictment, Dimmack read out the letter in a YouTube video. A photo of the handwritten note was soon posted online as well.

"I have been isolated from all ability to prepare to defend myself: no laptop, no internet, ever, no computer, no library, so far, but even if I get access it will just be for a half an hour, with everyone else, once a week," Assange wrote. "The other side? A superpower that has been preparing for 9 years, with hundreds of people and untold millions spent on the case."

Assange was arrested on April 11, after Ecuador revoked his political asylum and UK police seized him from the Latin American country's embassy in London. He was sentenced to 50 weeks behind bars for skipping bail, and sent to Belmarsh, a prison south of London once dubbed 'British Guantanamo' for being used to jail terrorism suspects.

"I am defenseless. I am unbroken, albeit literally surrounded by murderers, but, the days where I could read and speak and organize to defend myself, my ideals, and my people are over until I am free! Everyone else must take my place," Assange wrote in the letter.

The WikiLeaks publisher had sought refuge in Ecuador in 2012, claiming - correctly, as it turned out - that trumped-up charges in Sweden would be used to get him extradited to the US. A secret indictment of Assange, only made public in March, charged him with violating the Espionage Act over the 2010 publication of secret US military and diplomatic documents.

"The US government, or rather, those regrettable elements in it that hate truth, liberty and justice, want to cheat their way into my extradition and death, rather than letting the public hear the truth, for which I have won the highest awards in journalism and have been nominated 7 times for the Nobel Peace Prize," Assange wrote. "Truth, ultimately, is all we have."

The new charges against Assange have alarmed even the mainstream media outlets that have spent years pouring vitriol on WikiLeaks, as they began to realize his prosecution along those lines would essentially criminalize all journalism. However, because Assange and WikiLeaks have been demonized by advocates of the Russiagate conspiracy theory as "agents of the Kremlin" and spies, media pushback against the charges has been muted at best.

Comment: Journalist Cassandra Fairbanks charges that the US seeks to intimidate reporters by indicting Assange:

The US is apparently seeking to lock Assange away for the rest of his life as an example for all other journalists around the world to see, Fairbanks said, commenting on the latest indictment against the whistleblower announced by a federal grand jury. Each of the 17 additional charges introduced under the Espionage Act carries a 10-year prison sentence, meaning that the Wikileaks founder could face up to 175 years in jail in total.

"I am not even convinced that they will not give him the death penalty. There are other espionage act charges that carry the death penalty,"she told RT, adding that the US is likely to"throw everything they can at him."

Assange's prosecution goes beyond simply seeking to punish a man who exposed US atrocities, including the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Iraq as well as torture and mistreatment of prisoners, according to the journalist.

"They are sending a message that if you publish some leaks or something that the [US] government does not like, that is going to ruin your whole life. You can potentially go to jail forever."

The US government basically wants the people to give up hope that they will have any future at all if they ever dare to go against Washington, Fairbanks said.

"If there was something so important that you felt you needed to leak it, you could know that you would still have some of your life left afterwards. Now they are sending the message that you won't," she told RT.

The entire campaign against Assange is "a huge threat to the First Amendment, especially for the national security reporters," as it severely limits journalistic freedoms and puts reporters under indirect pressure from the US authorities.

"They are criminalizing journalism. That is exactly what they are doing and there is no way around it."

The fact that Assange is not even a US citizen and that he never committed any crime on US territory is particularly worrying, Fairbanks notes. She explained that this situation shows that pretty much any journalist from any country can become a victim of the US persecution and face extradition to America.

Fairbanks took particular issue with the indictment's claim that Assange endangered individuals working for the US government by publishing the classified government documents.

"To claim that the leaks harmed someone now would be ridiculous," she told RT.

During the 2010 trial of Chelsea Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst who provided Assange with the documents, the Pentagon itself confirmed that nobody was killed because of the leaks and nobody even had to be moved because of the leaks.

"I find it hard to believe that it would suddenly change, because the Pentagon had no interest in protecting Manning at that time," Fairbanks said.

There is little hope that Assange will be given a fair trial in the US justice system, former CIA analyst and whistleblower John Kiriakou, whose case was handled by the same District Court in Virginia, told RT.

According to Kiriakou, Assange should not count on the court's impartiality in his case: "They are going to try to make an example of Julian. He's been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia. His judge was also my judge and ex-Snowden's judge and [CIA whistleblower] Jeffry Sterling's judge who reserves every national security case for herself."

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.